


What Is A "Scan," Anyway? (FIRST DRAFT!)

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [123]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, Psi Corps, Telepath Law (Babylon 5), Worldbuilding, shameless self-insertion, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 06:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14743718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: Everyone talks about it, but no one really does.Well, except me.Edit 6/22/18: THIS ESSAY WAS MY FIRST PASS ON THE SUBJECT - AN UPDATED VERSION WITH MUCH MORE INFORMATION WILL SOON BE POSTED LATER IN THE PROJECT.And here is theupdated version! (It doesn't contain the example from chapter two of this essay (the one that takes place in Korea). That's still here.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The prologue of _Behind the Gloves_ is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10153487) \- please read!
> 
> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

NOTE: There are two chapters to this essay. Please don't skip chapter two!

\-----

Canon's always throwing these terms around, like "light scan" or "medium scan" or "deep scan" or "surface thoughts" or whatever, like everyone's supposed to know what this actually means under all that. I suppose viewers are supposed to think that telepaths have some magic button in their head called "scan" that they can choose to push or not push, so the law can say "don't push that, it's illegal!" and this makes total sense. (It doesn't.) Or maybe viewers are supposed to think telepaths have a "scan mechanic" in their heads and they roll an invisible die and if they get higher than a certain number, something happens. (Hey, I was once in a LARP where this was done with _rock paper scissors_. HELP ME.)

As I've already explained in an earlier essay, [telepathy is complicated](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12272781). Also, as I've already begun to discuss, "scanning" actually means nothing more than [paying attention](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10491045) (more on that [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14065014)). Maybe closely paying attention - but nothing more than paying attention.

And that deserves its own essay, so here we are.

First, there's what I recently posted to the [Tumblr blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/post/174108429113/talias-a-bit-confused).

\-----

**Talia’s a bit confused.**

She says, in _Mind War_ , as an analogy for telepathy, “It’s like staying in a hotel room where you can hear the people next door. You can try and shut it out, but it’s there. Just don’t listen unless you’re invited.”

That analogy is mixed up and misleading in so many different ways.

Here’s a better analogy.

Years ago, some friends of mine got a radio doorbell. It was easier to install than one wired into the house.

The neighbors, it turned out, also had a radio doorbell, and the two doorbells were on _the same frequency_.

Whenever someone rang the neighbors’ door, the bell rang in my friends’ house.

But it didn’t ring with their “own” chime - their own bell rang with a _different sound_ , the same sound that was ringing in their neighbors’ house when someone pressed _that_ door.

That’s telepathy.

\-----

Of course, I'm over-simplifying, but in a way, I hope, that clears up any misconceptions that telepathy is akin to "eavesdropping," or to "hearing voices in one's head," or that what one's aware of is always "quiet and in the background" and not at times "in your face."

It is the first misconception that I think is the most dangerous, because this is exactly the framing of telepathy that mundanes use in order to justify the criminalization of _sensory perception_ and the criminalization of _paying attention_ \- that somehow it's like "listening in on people next door" (something non-telepaths automatically think of as rude, if not illicit) and not "seeing the people standing directly in front of you" (something non-telepaths think of as entirely reasonable).

**The choice of metaphor is _political_ _._**

The other point I hoped to make in my analogy is that telepathy is _not_ like your "own" doorbell ringing with its _own_ sound when someone presses the neighbors' bell, but your "own" bell ringing with _their_ sound. It's a metaphor, but the point is that _someone else's_ thoughts or feelings feel like _that person_ , not like "your own." In the B5 universe, not being able to reliably distinguish one's own mental events from those of other people ("but it all feels the same, and sometimes I can't tell") would probably keep one out of the P3+ range (unless this could be developed with training), and possibly place one [in the P1 or P2 range](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10978596) (especially if it's more emotional than "thought" information):

  * P1s and P2s: These folks are in the zone between "normals" and "telepaths." Legally they are telepaths under Earth Alliance law (as written by normals), but they aren't strong enough be in the Corps (under Corps regulations, written by telepaths). P1s and P2s can sense others' minds to some degree, but not _consistently_ or _specifically_ enough for membership in the Corps. They may absorb the emotions of others around them, but be unable to distinguish what is "theirs" from what is "someone else's." And while they may have general _impressions_ from others, or pick up on strong emotions, they are unlikely to feel _specific information_ in others' surface thoughts. (YMMV - someone may know what his or her partner of twenty years is thinking, but that's not the same as feeling the surface thoughts of a person one literally just met.) P1s and P2s can't communicate telepathically, though they may be able to understand if someone 'casts  _to them_. In summary: It is **consistency and specificity** that distinguishes the P1s and P2s (not full telepaths) from the P3s and P4s (full telepaths, low end).



\-----

Now, what's a "scan"?

Dirty little secret: a "scan" is nothing more than _paying attention_ , with a new word coined (by mundanes) for it, so as to make it sound like something "technological." (I mean, the whole scheme was to "regulate" telepaths as listening devices. If they told the mundane public, "we want to criminalize paying attention," everyone would know this was bullshit.)

A "light scan" versus a "medium scan" versus a "deep scan," from a telepath's point of view, really just refers to how closely he or she is paying attention, and what he or she is paying attention to.

Let's start with passively picking up on one's environment. You know, hearing the doorbell.

Recall what Byron says to Garibaldi in _Paragon of Animals_ :

          "Do you know what a telepath has to do in order to avoid picking up stray thoughts? We have to kick down our natural abilities. Run rhymes and little songs through our heads, round and round. All that to keep from picking up what you're broadcasting loud enough to be heard halfway down the hall. ... Mundanes want us to fill our heads with noise and babble so we won't hear what you're shouting at the top of your minds."

DON'T YOU EVER DARE HEAR MY DOORBELL! AND IF YOU DO, YOU'VE VIOLATED ME! HOW DARE YOU KNOW WHEN SOMEONE'S AT MY DOOR? NEVER HEAR THE DOORBELL! ONLY HEAR YOUR _OWN_ DOORBELL!

Same doorbell. Different ring. You can't "only hear it" when it has "your" ring.

/sigh/

Now, they don't actually _criminalize_ having heard the doorbell (in the era of the Corps... they do go there after the Telepath War for about fifteen or sixteen years), but it's still considered "rude," and if mundanes know you heard the doorbell, you could be verbally or physically abused for it.

If there is one valid point to be made about Talia's problematic analogy, it is this: even if someone is trying their very hardest not to pay attention to the doorbell, _they will still hear the doorbell_. If the stimulus is loud and sudden, you're going to hear it and your attention will be on it.

Now, as people move through the world, they pay attention to this or to that. They see something, they hear something, they notice something, they smell something, and so on. At a party, someone's attention might shift from one conversation to the next, or from one person to the next. Their attention will fall on different things - what someone is wearing, what they look like, what they're drinking, what their laugh sounds like, what their perfume smells like... I'm making this up, but you can see the point here. People notice stuff.

And they notice things that are in the "background" - we all know the feel of fabric and shoes etc. against our bodies, we know what this feels like, but we go through the day, all day, tuning it out unless something is uncomfortable. It's always there.

For telepaths, "surface thoughts" are also ambient - always "there," though like the feel of fabric. And one can pay attention or not. (There isn't usually anything important to pay attention to.) But it's just a matter of attention. And unless people, like Byron above, are intentionally forcing themselves to pay attention to other things (which, by the way, impedes interacting with other people in any regular way), this kind of information will come through.

Normals' expectations are a little like saying, "you may talk to this person, but you may not smell their perfume, and so as you talk to them, you must intentionally distract yourself so you do not notice their perfume." Even if you can sort of manage this with mental gymnastics and years of forced training... it's still not completely possible, and always comes at a price.


	2. Chapter 2

**Now what's a "light scan"?**

I covered this in more detail in my essay [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14065014), but let me sum up:

**"Light scanning" just refers to a degree of intentionality (paying attention) that may or may not be necessary to pick up surface thoughts, or to get more detail. That's all this is: intention, which comes with more awareness of the thing you're attending to. (And "telepaths" are, by definition, people for whom others' thoughts are part of their sensory milieu.)**

You're reading this essay, so you know what it feels like to attend to a stimulus (the words) and get meaning in your head.

So, if passively picking up on "stray thoughts" is like happening to see words that happen to be written on a sign, even when you had no intention of looking at the sign, "scanning" is reading this essay. You are paying attention to these words, intentionally. And now you know things!

(It's a flawed analogy, because thoughts are not words, but let's put that aside for now.)

Perhaps better, it's roughly the difference between being at a party and passively seeing Sally and recognizing her, versus seeing Sally and then looking to see what she's wearing at the party. If you're paying attention to something and learning something as a result (Sally wore a designer dress!), that's a "light scan."

Now, here's where it gets funky: sometimes when people do the same thing, they get different results.

For a non-perfect analogy, consider this - most of you are looking at a screen right now, and seeing a complex mess of black spots on a white background. But because you are trained to read, you know they constitute letters and words, and so without any effort at all, when you see these black spots, you suddenly have _meaning_ in your head. And all you had to do was pay a minimal amount of attention to the black spots. Someone else, who could not read English, could focus on the same spots all day and get no meaning at all.

(I seriously hate using the "reading" metaphor because it reinforces the incorrect belief that thoughts are like words, and telepathy is "reading" someone else's mind, but this is the best I've got at the moment.)

What I actually mean is that by doing the _exact same thing_ \- paying attention - someone who is telepathic can pick up on "surface thoughts" (or more), while someone who is not telepathic won't. But they didn't have to hit the special secret "scan" button in their heads to do that - they did exactly what everyone else does, in some context or another.

And they got a different result.

**What's a "medium scan"? What's a "deep scan"?**

Again, the "magic" here is that when some people pay close attention, they know things other people can't.

These terms "medium scan" and "deep scan," from a telepath's perspective, refer in part to how close attention someone's paying, what they're paying attention to, what they're trying to know, and how they're getting there.

Ever played "Where's Waldo"? You just "scanned" that book.

You paid close attention to a sensory stimulus you were able to perceive, and looked for a specific piece of information.

/round of applause!/

Now, in the B5 universe, for reasons never explained, when a telepath pays that level of attention to someone, especially if he or she is very strong, it can cause vertigo or even pain, sometimes severe pain. (It looked to me like they were channeling Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy there and trying to present telepathy as rape, violation, harm, and so on, to justify the rest of this mess, but I don't know. Maybe there's some reason in that universe why this happens, and I'm just unaware of it. It's not even a "trying to cause pain" thing - though someone _can_ do that - it's just something that happens with deep scans. But somehow doesn't happen when people are lovers and are _just as deeply_ in each other's heads? I DON'T UNDERSTAND.)

My other point, of course, is that for telepaths, paying attention to the wrong things can be literally _criminal_ , as in the police come and arrest you and you have no rights to a lawyer or a trial or _anything_. And as much as Psi Cops generally hate doing this to other telepaths, because they know what bullshit it is, these are still the laws on the books and they need to make sure normals feel they are enforcing those laws, or else it puts the Corps (and all telepaths) in danger.

\-----

And now for something completely (OK, a little) different!

Recently, I was reading an entirely different book - "The Girl With Seven Names: A North Korea Defector's Story," by Hyeon-seo Lee. It's a memoir. At times, parts of the book seemed exaggerated to me, but that's neither here nor there for this essay. That's an entirely different discussion about how memoir can serve as a "political document."

My point is that more than halfway through the book, she's been out of North Korea (living in China) for ten years. She's so good at hiding, that not once, in all this time, did anyone suspect she was North Korean - and the one time she confided in someone, and that person reported her to the police, she talked her way out of it, convincing the police that it was a false report, and she was actually Korean-Chinese. She was suspected by no one - even the South Korean boyfriend she was living with never suspected her.

Anyway, she decides to get out of China, so she takes her expensive luggage and steps on a direct flight from China to Seoul, and requests asylum, telling the authorities there that she's North Korean.

And they're like SURE YOU ARE, LADY.

And they place her in lockup with all the other women who claim to be North Korean and who are trying to get into the country. (Many are Chinese, and they're trying to get into South Korea for economic reasons, so South Korea has to carefully vet people to see who is legit.)

In that lockup, she learns for the first time that gay and lesbian people actually existed in North Korea, and aren't a "Western thing," a "perversion of sexuality" invented by capitalism (what she was taught back in North Korea).

Then, after having to wait a week in this center, she's brought in for further questioning to see if she really is North Korean. The women in the lockup (like everyone else) believe she's Korean-Chinese and pretending to be from the North to sneak in and get benefits. And these are North Koreans - they don't believe her she's North Korean. She came in on a direct flight from China, well-fed, well-clothed, with expensive luggage. She has a Korean-Chinese accent. They think she's a bullshit artist.

Then she meets the guy who's interviewing refugees.

The process takes several days, and during that time, she stays in a small room all by herself. The first day, the guy walks in, looks at her, walks out, then comes back. He's confused because most people lie about their age - younger people try to be older to get benefits, or try to be younger so they can go to school on a student visa. Why would someone who looks 21 say they were 28, unless it was true? There is no benefit to being 28. He expected a woman who was 35, so he had to check that he was in the right cell.

Then he asks her questions about her hometown (and has her draw it), asks her about her life back in North Korea, etc.

Then the book says this:

" _Often during my questioning he went silent and stared deep into my eyes, tilting his head slightly as if searching for something. It was unnerving._ (emphasis mine) It crossed my mind that this was some bizarre form of flirting. After what the women had told me about the Thai prison [that lesbians existed, and straight women entered into lesbian relationships in prison], nothing would have surprised me. I didn't want to give him any ideas."

[Cue me laughing my ass off, wondering if this part of the memoir is true, and if it is, if she even knew what she was describing. She could have just reported in the memoir what had really happened, not knowing what had occurred.]

Then later, it says this:

The next day, the interrogator smiled for the first time. The questioning was over, he said. "I believe you are North Korean."

"How did you know?" An enormous grin spread across my face. By now I felt as if I'd known him for months. "The women think I'm Chinese."

He made a modest gesture with his palms. "I've been vetting people for fourteen years," he said. "After a while you get a feel for the psychology. I can usually tell when people are lying."

"How?"

"From their eyes."

I felt my face redden. That explained the lingering eye contact. He hadn't been flirting at all.

"Still, you were a curious case," he said. "You're in the one percent that I've seen in fourteen years."

_One per cent?_

"First, you're the only person I've met who arrived here easily, by direct flight from where you were living. Second, it took you no time to get here - just a two-hour journey - and third, you didn't have to pay any brokers. That's what I mean. You just jumped on a plane. Was it your idea?"

"Yes."

"Then you're a genius."

\-----

Oh, sure. From their eyes. _Sure._ You're not the only one here with secrets, dear.

No one has figured her out in ten years, but the one time she really needs someone to believe her... this is what happens at the border. The day is saved because the guy who actually does the final interviews to figure out who is really from the North and who is an imposter is apparently telepathic, and can tell she is telling the truth even though her story is so weird and unique, he's never seen a case like hers in the fourteen years he's been on the job.

And how?

He stared at her intently, and paid really close attention as if searching for something, and it was _unnerving_. Too intimate.

And then somehow he knew things.

"What's a scan?"

That.


End file.
